Chase County

Chase County, Kansas checks in with a median home price of $155,158, a 0.64% year-over-year price gain, and a cash-flow score of 0 from this model. That last number is the headline. The investment estimate carries zeroed-out cap rate, cash-on-cash return, and net cash flow figures, which reflects the absence of reliable rent data for a county of 2,570 people rather than a confirmed cap rate of zero, but the signal is still clear: the rental market here is thin enough that standard underwriting models cannot price it with confidence. The affordability index of 86 and a median household income of $52,481 against a $155,158 price point suggest housing is accessible, but accessibility alone does not build a rental portfolio if tenant demand is structurally limited by population size.

The scores frame where Chase sits on the spectrum. Appreciation scores a 56 out of 100, cash flow scores a 0, and overall the county lands at 63, placing it in the 62nd percentile nationally across 1,000 counties and 65th out of 105 Kansas counties. That profile, modest appreciation potential with no quantifiable cash-flow signal, is not the profile of a bread-and-butter rental market. It is closer to a speculative land or lifestyle-property play. A cash-flow buyer needs rent data, tenant depth, and vacancy turnover, none of which a 2,570-person county reliably supplies. An appreciation buyer might find the 56 appreciation score marginally interesting but would need to explain why prices in a shrinking rural county outpace the 0.64% trailing gain. A value-add operator faces the same structural ceiling: rents are likely low and the buyer pool on exit is narrow, which compresses the upside that makes value-add underwriting work. None of the three primary investor archetypes find a clean fit here.

No economic anchors are provided in the data, so employment base and job stability cannot be assessed from these figures. What the population figure does confirm is that Chase County is one of the smallest counties in this dataset. A 2,570-person county has a correspondingly small employed workforce, a limited apartment rental pool, and meaningful concentration risk in any single employer disruption. That is not an invented risk, it is arithmetic: a workforce small enough that one plant closure or one institutional downsizing materially shifts local housing demand.

On the carry-cost side, the state-average effective property tax rate of 1.41% and an insurance rate of 0.58% combine to $257 per month in tax and insurance on a $155,158 property. The 1.41% rate is flagged "normal" in this model, so it does not represent a special burden, but $257 per month is still a fixed cost that lands on every month whether the unit is occupied or not. At this price point, that monthly drag will consume a meaningful share of any gross rent achievable in a rural Kansas market. The caveat embedded in the data applies here: 1.41% is a state-average estimate from Tax Foundation 2024, and actual Chase County or township rates will differ, so pull the county assessor's current mill levy before finalizing any underwrite.

The core risk in Chase County is concentration and scale. A population of 2,570 means the entire rental universe is measured in dozens of units, not hundreds. Regulatory risk is not flagged by the data, but the demographic and population-size risk is implicit in every number on this sheet. If you own two or three rentals here and lose a tenant, your personal vacancy rate is 33 to 50 percent. That is not an abstraction, it is the practical consequence of operating in a market this small.

Compared to the provided neighbors, Chase's $155,158 median price is the second-lowest in the peer set, above only Rush County at $85,174. But Rush County scores a 64 overall, fractionally higher than Chase's 63, at roughly half the price. The neighbors with actual rent data, Miami County at $1,775 median rent and a 0.058 rent-to-price ratio, Douglas County at $1,622 rent and a 0.060 ratio, and Riley County at $1,339 rent and a 0.061 ratio, all demonstrate measurable rental demand and calculable yields. Riley County, anchored by a university market at $261,211 median price and a 0.061 rent-to-price ratio, scores a 65 and offers a more legible cash-flow story than Chase can provide. Choose Chase over these neighbors only if your thesis is specifically rural Kansas land or residential-to-farm-adjacent plays at low absolute price points with a very long hold horizon. For a conventional buy-and-hold rental strategy, any of the three neighbors with published rent data offers a more underwritable opportunity at reasonable price tiers.